ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Educ.
Sec. STEM Education
Volume 10 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/feduc.2025.1613039
The Effect of Preferred Background Music on Mathematical Performance of Adolescents with Mathematics Difficulties
Provisionally accepted
- Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Tel Aviv District, Israel
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There is substantial evidence indicating the favorable influence of music on task performance; however, few studies have explored the specific impact of background music on mathematics achievements. This paper addresses the gaps in the existing literature and explores the effect of background music on adolescents' performance in mathematics. It also examines the impact of preferred background music on students' mathematical achievements.Data were collected from 65 10th-grade students with difficulties in mathematics, who were randomly assigned to two study groups. All participants took three mathematics tests in algebra. The experimental group solved the tests under three different conditions: without background music, with background music, and with self-selected background music. The control group took the tests without background music. The results indicated that solving mathematics tasks while listening to self-selected background music enhances students' mathematical performance compared to solving mathematics tasks with predetermined background music or without any background music. These findings add to the theoretical literature regarding the impact of background music on students' mathematics achievements and provide practical guidance for mathematics educators in their discourse on students' mathematics learning in class. The findings underscore the necessity for further investigations to elucidate the underlying factors of the effects of background music on learning. 2023), only a few have specifically focused on mathematics performance (see Cheah et al., 2022 review). More replication studies are needed to increase our knowledge of how selfselected background music impacts mathematical performance. This study examines how the choice of preferred background music impacts students' achievements in mathematical tests.The following literature review will address theoretical models connecting background music and learning. It will present empirical studies examining the impact of
Keywords: background music, mathematics achievement, Difficulties in mathematics, adolecents, Preffered background music
Received: 16 Apr 2025; Accepted: 22 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Milman and Paz-Baruch. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Nurit Paz-Baruch, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, 5290002, Tel Aviv District, Israel
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